Unified Communications

When you think of enterprise communications Avaya is certainly one of the first names that comes to mind. A huge player in the space, the company has a tremendous amount of influence in the future shape of things to come in telecom.
As we all know by now, one of the fastest-growing segments of the market is unified communications. In order to get a read on Avaya’s positioning in the UC space I decided my readers would benefit from a high level Avaya interview.
The following is that interview with Stuart Wells, President, Global Communications Solutions at Avaya. I was pretty interested in many of his thoughts and especially in how Avaya is evolving to become a software company.

Vonage just can’t catch a break these days and seems to be the target of more lawsuits related to patent infringements than just about any other company out there. The latest patent fight is with Nortel, a company who says Vonage is infringing on twelve of its patents.
``Defending our intellectual property rights is a top priority for Nortel,'' said Nortel spokesman Mohammed Nakhooda. ``That's why we are seeking damages and to put an injunction on the use of our technology with respect to Vonage.''
``The litigation is ongoing and both parties have filed and will continue to file papers,'' said Vonage spokesman Charles Sahner. Nortel's filing ``is a countersuit in defense.''
Generally speaking when a company becomes as high profile as Vonage they also have an arsenal of patents.

It goes without saying that unified communications was one of the most exciting growth areas in the communications market this past quarter. Microsoft continues to be a major driver of this technology with its Office Communications Server (OCS) product. In fact, not only has Steve Ballmer been on stage to promote UC and OCS but recently Bill Gates was brought out to tout the technology as well.
The launch of OCS represents a watershed event in telecom and as I have mentioned earlier, never in the history of telecom has there been a new product roll-out supported by over 50 other companies.
To be sure, Microsoft OCS is THE communications product of 2007. Whether you plan on installing OCS in your organization or not, you should be aware that the marketing push Microsoft is putting behind this product has showed no signs of slowing down.

Should service providers be allowed to alter your web pages? The issue came up yet again when Toronto-based Rogers decided to insert messages containing sales messages in web pages they display on their customer’s browsers.
"We are concerned about these reports," Google said in an emailed statement to the Toronto Star.
"As a general principle, we believe that maintaining the Internet as a neutral platform means that carriers shouldn't be able to interfere with Web content without users' permission," the Google statement said. "We are in the process of contacting the relevant parties to bring this to a quick resolution."
Without a doubt, this is the sort of issue that begs for politicians to ensure there is network neutrality.
If service providers are allowed to display messages in web browsers, there are virtually unlimited things they can do to destroy other businesses. They could for example only show messages on Google search pages thereby giving users the incentive to switch search engines.

In 2000 my team at TMC received a call from a new company named Blue Silicon that received around 70+ million dollars to form a company that would integrate voicemail across disparate systems. The company launched at Internet Telephony Conference & Expo and in a keynote session the response from the audience was very very encouraging.
It seems the problem the company was solving intersected with a corporate need.
Shortly thereafter, the telecom bubble burst and funding for many new companies in telecom and datacom was ceased. Blue Silicon closed was forced to cease operations.
I couldn’t help but think of Blue Silicon when I read this Wall Street Journal story about Mediaware Communications, a new company allowing a user to have a web browser interface to a variety of telecommunications services from disparate providers.
In the article there is a comparison of this solution to the way Slingbox works – in both cases you are able to remotely access a service. But in the case of Mediaware, you are able to access your voicemail via a web browser and in so doing you are able to dramatically improve it.
I tried to access the company’s service but could not find them on the Internet.

It’s a good time to be in telecom. With all the housing gloom and doom it is nice to see that at least the telecom market is doing exceedingly well. Of course you have to pick your battles… Consumer VoIP is a rough space to be in (just ask Vonage) but companies focusing on the enterprise are as happy as pigs – well let’s keep this semi clean – Pigs in subprime mortgages.
Case in point, after a sluggish second quarter in 2007, enterprise telephony equipment manufacturers saw an 11 percent jump in worldwide sales in 3Q07 to reach $2.6 billion, according to a recent study.
“The Big Three (Avaya, Cisco, and Nortel) had excellent quarters, all growing well into the double digits,” said Matthias Machowinski, directing analyst for enterprise voice and data at Infonetics Research.
Worldwide sales of service provider next-gen voice equipment are up 5 percent in 3Q07 from 2Q07 to $956.4 million, says Infonetics Research in its "Service Provider VoIP and IMS Equipment and Subscribers" report.
“The bump this quarter was partially due to seasonal factors, as the third quarter tends to be strong, but also because of increased demand across the board, even in the TDM segment.

Good news for those vendors looking for 3rd-party certification of their WiFi solutions as well as companies and consumers looking for the authentic “WiFi telephony” seal so glaringly absent from the marketplace today.
Russell Shaw’s blog discusses how the WiFi Alliance has established a Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Voice Personal Initiative and discusses how you can get involved.
Why would such a seal make sense you ask? Well, not only does WiFi telephony have all the inherent challenges associated with packetized voice such as having to deal with bandwidth issues, latency and jitter… It has to deal with wireless issues as well. Examples include seamless hand-off of calls between base stations and eventually seamless hand-offs between base stations and cellular, WiMax and who knows what other sorts of wireless standards.
This new initiative should be very good for the WiFi telephony market.

TMCnet’s Greg Galitzine announced the rumor on October 19th that NexTone and Reef Point were to merge. Today the news becomes real as the companies are combining to create NextPoint. Here are some quick facts and quotes according to the companies:

Combined Companies to Deliver First Integrated Border Gateway, in Addition to Full Suite of Products Under the new NextPoint Name

“The integration of session border controllers for both fixed and mobile networks with a security gateway enabled by the merger of Reef Point and NexTone will create a powerful product family for next generation networks,” said Malcolm Wardlaw, Director, Converged Services, Intelligence and Applications, BT. “The IBG has the potential to simplify network design as well as reduce the total cost of ownership in a converged world, supporting the needs of our customers in an all-IP world.”
“The increasing demand for secured IP-based mobility services in a multi-access environment is creating a need for a new category of equipment called the multi-access convergence gateways that provides intelligent interaction with subscribers, services, and transport mechanisms,” said Stéphane Téral, Principal Analyst, Service Provider VoIP, IMS & FMC, Infonetics Research.

Like flash floods, Flash phones will soon be overtaking the market in a rapid fashion as more and more developers realize Flash gives them the ability to so much more than other programming environments. TechCrunch has an overview of a new company in this space called TringMe. Currently the Indian-based organization is looking to license its technology to VoIP providers. There is a demo on the Tringme website which is not so impressive at the moment but it shows what a Flash phone could be.
Why does a Flash phone make sense?